Amidst the fiery and clamorous health care debates presently raging in the US, the sordid reality of mental illness in US prisons has not found itself as an issue or topic. It is dumbfounding to find out that ‘the mentally ill have come to make up more than half of the US prison population.’

Unfortunately, ‘long term psychiatric facilities have all but disappeared throughout the US and the under-funded and over-crowded public hospitals can offer only short term services.’

Psychiatric hospitals in the US currently house fewer than 40,000 Americans. However, ‘30 times that number – 1.25 million mentally ill people – are serving time in US prisons.’ The jails and prisons in the US have become the veritable new asylum for the mentally ill. In each of the over 3,000 counties in the United States, ‘the jail has more mentally ill people than the hospital.’

“It is really a travesty that we would take mentally ill people and cycle them through incarcerations. They’re just cycled through there as big human warehouses,” says Bill Kleiber, a former inmate with bipolar disorder.

In these penal institutions, direct contact with a doctor may be rare. However, prescription medications pour in ‘through the corrections system without a problem.’ The facilities are understaffed and overmedicated.

The crux of the dilemma is whether the jail system should help or punish those mentally ill who happen to break the law.

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Via Al Jazeera